


Lightning Does the Work

by Polly_Lynn



Category: Castle
Genre: Babies, Children, Children of Characters, Cute Kids, F/M, Family, Gen, Making Out, Romance, Storms, Thunder and Lightning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-30
Updated: 2017-08-30
Packaged: 2018-12-21 18:55:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11950542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: She's Beautiful





	Lightning Does the Work

**Author's Note:**

> A little bit of nothing. Future fic.

"Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; 

but lightning does the work." 

—Mark Twain

* * *

 

 

She’s beautiful. 

Beckett. Kate. His wife. 

She’s a now-and-then glimpse through the mostly closed door. A sliver of elegance, appearing and disappearing in the flicker of tea lights in the bathroom mirror. In the sheet of blue that lights up the room behind him not quite a moment before the earsplitting crack of thunder. 

“Beautiful,” she mutters as she braces her hips against the counter and leans in toward her own reflection. “Hardly.” 

She’s scowling, but not. He’s startled, but not. 

He hadn’t meant to lurk. Hadn’t meant to drift so close, abandoning whatever task he’d been in the middle of. Whatever night-time ritual he should be honoring. But she’s beautiful. His _wife._ The word—the very _idea_ —comes with the lift and tilt and swoop of wonder deep in the heart of him. The patter of a thousand wings fluttering inside after all this time. 

“Definitely.” It's too much for him. The sight of her against the backdrop of the storm. He edges through the door, crowding up behind her. He noses the irregular fall of hair off the nape of her neck and catches her wrists. Arrests her busy hands with his own and brings them to rest, criss-crossed at her waist. He devours her reflection. “So beautiful.” 

Her brows lift. Deep creases in her forehead and the absurd fan of a ponytail pulled high, then half-forgotten in the hundred things tugging at her attention. A smear of lotion under one eye, underscoring the dark circle there. She meets his gaze in the mirror, incredulous at the naked desire she sees there. 

“Exhausted,” she says, tugging one hand free. She’s sheepish. Blushing as she bats at his cheek, then swipes at the lotion on her own. “Old.” 

“Beautiful,” he whispers the word against her neck. “Always.” 

He feels her shoulders soften. Feels the slow-burning fuse of a shiver travel from her skin to his. He takes advantage. He turns her in his arms and glides backwards, tugging her along. Her robe billows out behind her, something bright and silky and exotic in the haphazard glow of candles and the odd electric lantern bleeding in through the office book case. 

“Weren’t you . . .?” 

She sounds frazzled. Resistant, but not. He wants to charm her. She wants to be charmed, but they each have a hundred things waiting to be done and quiet like this is a precious commodity. Still, her palms glide over the backs of his hands. Along his forearms and up to his shoulders. Her fingers snag in the stretched out collar of a ratty eighth-day t-shirt. 

“Doing something,” she murmurs against his lips. She’s crashing into his chest by then. They’re toppling back on to the bed. “Laundry. You were doing laundry.”

She rolls on to her side. Rolls away from him, glowering, but not really. Scolding, but giving in the minute he gives chase. The minute he kisses her against the backdrop of another brilliant sheet of blue.

“Power’s out.” It’s an afterthought. An excuse neither of them believes riding on a grin. On another shiver shared between them as thunder rolls and rattles the windows. “Can’t do laundry.” 

“Can’t.” She gives him a narrow-eyed look as she flops on to her back and spreads her arms overhead. She sweeps them upward, like she’s thinking of making angels in the sloppy mountain of half-sorted clothes beneath them. “Can’t fold? Can’t put away?”

“Oh!” A bright exclamation, as though inspiration has just struck. “I can.” He burrows his hands behind her back, gathering the silky expanse of her robe in his fists. Lifting her toward him and tumbling her arms from the wide sleeves. “Fold. Put away. Purpose renewed, Beckett.” 

He comes up, triumphant, with the robe in one hand. He tosses it high into the air. Ignores the fall of it half over his face as he sets to work on the puzzle of the drawstring cinched tight around her waist. She laughs out loud at his focus. His determination, abrupt and absolute. 

She surrenders to it, loose limbed and soft spined beneath him as he grumbles. As his hands give up on the knot and he dives low, tugging at it with his teeth, playing and not playing at all as the evening rough of his cheek  drags across the skin of her belly and everything turns dark and wonderful. 

“Purpose,” she echoes, chin tipped up as lightning turns the world into a film noir tableau. Another sharp peal of thunder sounds, almost on top of the light show. It drives her. She pushes at the tangle over her robe across his head and shoulders. Claws at his t-shirt. At his hair when her clumsy efforts finally yield the warm breadth of his bare shoulders. “Yes.” 

“Ow!” His teeth graze her hip. Retaliation for the sharp tug, but he heeds the call. He clambers urgently up her body, wondering about scissors. About efficiency and _now, now now._ Wondering quite out loud, apparently. 

“No scissors,” she snaps. She rolls him on to his back. She straddles his hips and glares at the problem before her. The low-slung, paper-bag waist of flannel pants, stubbornly snagged on the sharp blade of her hip bones. 

“Quickest,” he argues, playing dirty as he slides fingertips up the inside of her thigh. She tenses under the assault. She rolls into his body, and he groans, urgency backfiring. “Gotta be quick, Beckett.” 

“Quick.” She frowns down at him. “Sexy, Castle.” 

“Gotta be.” He arcs himself upright. He kisses her hard. Kisses her in a stuttering flash of blue and the sudden cascade of her hair as he loosens the tie and holds it up like a warning. Pink and sparkly and too small, with a hard plastic polka dot bow. He scowls and holds it up between them. “Not much . . .” 

He doesn’t have a chance to finish. The sizzle and boom of thunder swallow down the last word, and then it’s obvious.

“Mom?” The small voice is brave. The dark shape is upright and bold in the doorway, but the wind moans outside the window. The lightning comes again and the shape is in motion. A swift patter of feet not quite lost in the thunder. The small voice again, still brave, but wavering. “Mommy?” 

He falls back, sighing. She falls with him, mouth hot and open against his shoulder. Against his throat. Laughing. Groaning as she fishes around and comes up with his just-shed t-shirt. 

“Lil?” she says, a smiling, teasing echo as she rolls to the side. As she opens her arms. “Lily?” 

“I wasn’t scared.” Lily scales the foot of the bed, insistent.  “I _wasn’t_.” 

“Of course _you_ weren’t.” He finishes tugging the shirt back on, then grabs for her. His mostly theatrical _oof_ makes her laugh. Makes her scowl and shriek when he swings her up high, then plops her down between them. “ _I_ was scared, but you? Not you.”

“Was he?” Her head tips Kate’s way. She peers up, dark eyes and long lashes like a mirror to her mother. “Was Daddy scared?” 

 “I think he was.” Kate buries a laugh in her daughter’s hair. She catches her pale fingers and presses their two hands together to his chest. “Feel how his heart is pounding?”

“Fast,” she says, her eyes going wide. “Like the bunny at the zoo. _So,_ fast.” 

“Just like the bunny, Lilliput.” His fingers creep across the bed to find Kate’s hip. To tease the stupid, unrelenting line of fabric and make her shiver. “Wait though!” He sounds surprised. Innocent, despite the wicked smile he shoots her way. “Mom’s heart is pounding, too.” 

“Mom’s not scared.” Lily gives him a withering look. “Mom’s _never_ scared.” 

“That’s not true,” she says swiftly. Sharply. 

He looks toward her, startled. He'd meant it for a laugh. A segue into the bravery of Beckett women who definitely sleep in their own beds, but she's serious in the dark-light-dark of the candle flames. Serious in the now-and-then blue sheets of light. 

"You're scared of _thunderstorms?_ ” Lily's voice is small again. Hushed. 

“Not storms,” he says when Kate doesn’t. When he feels the tension in her spine and imagines the litany of fears running rampant through her mind, so many tangled up with the little force of nature tucked between them. With the sunny-souled baby boys sleeping through it all upstairs. He knows it. He comes to her rescue in words.  “Mom’s a big fan of storms.” 

It’s the right thing. The needle of dark, delicious memory he threads with his voice. With the splay of his fingers up and over her ribs. It’s the right memory to call on, even if it does win him a sharp twist of his ear. 

“Not thunderstorms.” She fits the curve of her palm around Lily’s cheek and looks her in the eye. “But it’s ok to be scared. I’m scared of lots of things.”

“What things?” Her skepticism comes through the enormous yawn. Through the heavy flutter of thick lashes. "What kinda things, Mommy?" 

"It's late, Lily girl." She makes it a  sing-song. Means it to lull and coax and soothe, but her voice is thick. The question rests heavy on her. "Too late for laundry lists." 

"Not laundry." The not-so-little voice rises. It hits a steely, stubborn _annoyed_ note. "What _kind_?" 

Their eyes meet across the suddenly furious, flailing body between them. His questioning, hers offering weary assent. 

"One thing," he says sternly. "We'll tell you _one thing_ , and then eyes shut."  

"Eyes shut _tight,_ " she answers. She quiets all at once. She squirms higher up between them, then stills, entirely too satisfied at getting her way.  

"Good girl." Kate smooths the dark, baby-fine hair back from Lily's moon-pale forehead. She busies her hands, unsettled. Still unsettled, so he takes it up. The customary burden of words. 

"The dark." He says it in a stage whisper. Says it with a hand creeping along the generous line of pillows to find hers where it rests above their daughter's head. 

"The _dark_ ," Lily echoes. Her head raises up. She blinks at them, awed by the possibility. "Mommy's scared right now?"

"Not now," he says quickly. "Now she has me." He flicks an eyebrow. Puffs up his chest and gets a vicious squeeze of the fingers for his trouble. "But when she was as little as you . . ."

"Not little," she frowns so ferociously, they both bite back a laugh. "The Babies are little."

“You’re not.” His voice cracks as he realizes it’s true. As he looks down and sees her spindly legs stretching almost to their knees. “Not little any more.  But Mom was scared even when she was bigger than the Babies, Lil." He plays it up. Draws out the drama and draws them both in, two dark heads turned toward him, two pairs of eyes flashing gold. He meets hers with a grin. Something smug he’ll pay for, and he welcomes the thought. "Gramps told me."

"Oh, he _did_?" Kate gasps, half playing along, half indignant. Burning to know. "And when was this?”

"Long time ago." His heart thumps, thinking of it. Remembering his own fears. How deep they ran. How deep they still run on the wrong kind of dark night, and she seems to know. Her touch gentles, and her gaze, when he finds it, is soft now. "Long time." 

"Gramps knew Mommy then." Lily's voice is low and rough. Sloppy and loose, but her eyes go wide, one last time. She nods up at him, like she's delivering the scoop of the century.  "When she was little like the Babies."

"He sure did, Lily girl." Kate laughs. 

She leans in to kiss the soft pink of one cheek, then the other. He takes in the sight, breathless. 

One dark head seeking the other in a perfect, wordless moment. His wife, his daughter.

"Beautiful," he murmurs.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading.


End file.
